belonged to the gang but almost never worked with either of the two groups, I don’t know whether because she didn’t want to or because Gordo wouldn’t let her. I insist that Tere was a case apart: to all intents and purposes she was the same as everyone else; well, to all intents and purposes except for one, because sometimes she didn’t show up at La Font and didn’t always come along on jobs with us and then we had to find someone to take her place. One night I asked Tere about these disappearances, but she smiled, winked at me and didn’t answer. Another night I asked Gordo while smoking a joint with him in the toilet of Rufus, and Gordo answered me with a confusing explanation about Tere’s family from which I only caught clearly that her father was dead or missing, that she lived with her mother and older sister in the prefabs, as well as two nieces, and that she had another sister who’d left home more than a year ago but had just returned, pregnant with her first child.
‘One person who never or almost never missed those daily meetings in La Font was me. Shortly before getting into Zarco’s gang I began to live by an invariable routine: I’d get up about noon, have breakfast, read or loaf around until lunchtime and, when my parents went to have their siesta and my sister went back to work at the pharmaceutical lab, I left and didn’t come back till the early hours of the morning. Around three or three-thirty in the afternoon I’d get to La Font and, while waiting for my friends, I’d talk to the landlady or her customers. I sort of made friends with some of them, especially with Córdoba, a small, scraggy man with a felt hat, always dressed in black and always with a toothpick between his lips, who often bought me beers while we talked about red-light-district things; but I also made friends with an old Communist prostitute called Eulalia, who never raised her large glasses of anisette without toasting the health of La Pasionaria and the hoped-for death of the traitor Carrillo; or with a salesman of pipes, peanuts and candies called Herminio, who would show up at La Font mostly on the weekends and talk about bullfighting and recite poetry in an impossible Catalan and predict the end of the world and the invasion of the planet by extraterrestrials, before visiting all the brothels, offering his wares in a wicker basket; or with a couple of lingerie and trinket salesmen whose names I never knew or have forgotten, two twin brothers who’d arrive after eating lunch in a downtown restaurant, fat, congested and sweaty, with a couple of cheap cigars in their mouths and a couple of patched suitcases in their hands, and leave at dinner time bragging at the top of their voices of having sold their best pieces.
‘My friends would start to show up about four or four-thirty, and from that moment on we’d spend the afternoon talking, going out to smoke joints on Galligants Bridge and drinking beer among the lush collection of hookers, Gypsies, hawkers, hustlers, quinquis , lost causes and crooks who tended to congregate in La Font, until around midnight, after eating a snack somewhere, we went to Rufus to end the day. This happened especially at the beginning, during the first two or three weeks, when there were whole evenings when we practically never left the district. Then we began to escape as a rule to the coast or inland, and La Font became just a meeting place. But by then we were already a fully fledged criminal gang, or just about, and everything had changed.’
‘Before you tell me, let me ask you a question I’ve been wondering about for a while now.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Didn’t you see your friends from Caterina Albert Street again?’
‘That summer? Once or twice, hardly at all, and only just in passing. As I said I would leave the house at three or three-thirty in the afternoon and not return until the early hours, so it was unlikely I’d run into them; besides, we didn’t go to the same
‘One person who never or almost never missed those daily meetings in La Font was me. Shortly before getting into Zarco’s gang I began to live by an invariable routine: I’d get up about noon, have breakfast, read or loaf around until lunchtime and, when my parents went to have their siesta and my sister went back to work at the pharmaceutical lab, I left and didn’t come back till the early hours of the morning. Around three or three-thirty in the afternoon I’d get to La Font and, while waiting for my friends, I’d talk to the landlady or her customers. I sort of made friends with some of them, especially with Córdoba, a small, scraggy man with a felt hat, always dressed in black and always with a toothpick between his lips, who often bought me beers while we talked about red-light-district things; but I also made friends with an old Communist prostitute called Eulalia, who never raised her large glasses of anisette without toasting the health of La Pasionaria and the hoped-for death of the traitor Carrillo; or with a salesman of pipes, peanuts and candies called Herminio, who would show up at La Font mostly on the weekends and talk about bullfighting and recite poetry in an impossible Catalan and predict the end of the world and the invasion of the planet by extraterrestrials, before visiting all the brothels, offering his wares in a wicker basket; or with a couple of lingerie and trinket salesmen whose names I never knew or have forgotten, two twin brothers who’d arrive after eating lunch in a downtown restaurant, fat, congested and sweaty, with a couple of cheap cigars in their mouths and a couple of patched suitcases in their hands, and leave at dinner time bragging at the top of their voices of having sold their best pieces.
‘My friends would start to show up about four or four-thirty, and from that moment on we’d spend the afternoon talking, going out to smoke joints on Galligants Bridge and drinking beer among the lush collection of hookers, Gypsies, hawkers, hustlers, quinquis , lost causes and crooks who tended to congregate in La Font, until around midnight, after eating a snack somewhere, we went to Rufus to end the day. This happened especially at the beginning, during the first two or three weeks, when there were whole evenings when we practically never left the district. Then we began to escape as a rule to the coast or inland, and La Font became just a meeting place. But by then we were already a fully fledged criminal gang, or just about, and everything had changed.’
‘Before you tell me, let me ask you a question I’ve been wondering about for a while now.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Didn’t you see your friends from Caterina Albert Street again?’
‘That summer? Once or twice, hardly at all, and only just in passing. As I said I would leave the house at three or three-thirty in the afternoon and not return until the early hours, so it was unlikely I’d run into them; besides, we didn’t go to the same
Similar Books
